Today at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, Donald Trump joked about second amendment fanatics assassinating President Hillary Clinton (or, possibly, a justice she appoints) to prevent her from putting liberal justices on the Supreme Court.
CLEVELAND — The free market is alive and well here at the Republican National Convention. Because in addition to the official, RNC-sanctioned merchandise for sale within the arena, private vendors are making a killing selling Trump-themed refuse to freedom-loving, Hillary-hating passersby everywhere.
No professional group in America has a more direct interest in gun control than police officers. No labor group in America is more consistently despicable than police unions. There is an opportunity here.
The guards of Rikers Island—New York’s corrupt and deadly hellhole of a jail complex—are getting new weapons and training from US Corrections Special Operations Group (US C-SOG), a private company based in Virginia that signed a $1.2 million contract with the NYC’s Department of Corrections earlier this year.
The Westside Rifle & Pistol Range, not far from the Flatiron Building, looks like some dire conservative prophecy come to life—America’s gun-lovers stripped of all rights, forced to target-shoot in windowless bunkers. To the range’s regulars, that’s sometimes how it feels. While their brethren in Texas or Florida roam free, idly polishing pistols in line at the grocery store, Manhattan’s gun owners are confined to a drop-ceilinged basement, where exposed pipes, peeling rolly chairs, and thrifty fluorescent lighting bring to mind a repurposed boiler room.
After Democrats in the Senate staged a filibuster in support of gun control measures, their colleagues in the House have begun a “sit-in” aimed at embarrassing Republicans into allowing a vote on a measure that would restrict the ability of suspected terrorists to legally buy guns. The move is fantastic political theater. It’s also a tremendous waste of popular support and activist energy in support of a measure that isn’t just ineffective but also actively offensive.
A court hearing was just held for the trio who were pulled over with a loaded AR-15 rifle, a loaded 12-gauge shotgun, five pistols, body armor, tactical gear, knives, high-capacity ammo and an ammo box with the words “shoot your local heroin dealer” on it, just outside the Holland Tunnel in New Jersey yesterday morning, just minutes after this picture was posted.
On Monday, a representative of the National Rifle Association officially blamed “political correctness” for the massacre in Orlando this past weekend. This line of argument—that that the killings were a result of our inability to speak frankly about the dangers this country faces—gathered momentum while the dead bodies still lay in the Pulse nightclub.
An argument between a driver and bike messengers in Manhattan yesterday almost became deadly when the driver pulled out a gun. Reports of a gunman spread, and a local elementary school was even put on lockdown, but thankfully police and firefighters arrived before anyone was shot.
In 1962, the Pentagon had a pickle on its hands: America wanted to give South Vietnam guns with which to kill its Communist brothers and sisters in North Vietnam, but we couldn’t figure out which guns. The answer became as clear 50 years ago as it is today: The AR-15 is an incredibly good tool for killing lots of other humans.
On Thursday, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Americans do not have a constitutional right to carry concealed guns in public. “The 2nd Amendment may or may not protect to some degree a right of a member of the general public to carry a firearm in public,” Judge William A. Fletcher wrote for the majority. “If there is such a right, it is only a right to carry a firearm openly.”
Yesterday afternoon, police officers in New Jersey were combing the Greenwood Forest Wildlife Management Area in the eastern part of the state when they came upon an abandoned car. After searching the area, they arrested two men in combat gear who were in possession of various weapons, including high-powered automatic rifles.
Author and friend of Gawker Mac Montandon is behind Fun Lovers Unite!, an evening of music and comedy benefiting the Manhattan Chapter of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, happening Wednesday, May 11, at New York’s Highline Ballroom, featuring Yo La Tengo, Janeane Garofalo, and many more. Tickets, including a $20 ticket for students, are available here. In 2013, Montandon contributed the essay “A Hollywood Ending,” about the death of his brother and its aftermath.
A recent online petition to allow open carry of firearms at the Republican National Convention in July, which had acquired 51,376 signatures as of Tuesday evening, was apparently authored by a man who is not actually a Second Amendment activist, but a Hillary Clinton supporter.
